The Fledgling
by Rookatthedoor
Summary: This story is set in Henry's first years as a Vampyre. It is loosly connected to Celluci and the Selchies. It is a stand alone piece that grew out of a flashback to large to include in C and the S's. The stories overlap at one point in Henry's memory.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One (Abandoned)

_After she had left him it hadn't taken him very long to decide that he didn't want to be dead._

She was his world, his life, everything. His existence centered on her, she had made him. She was his sire. He belonged to her.

When he had been nothing but ravening hunger that consumed even the dark, when he had known nothing, when he had nothing, not even a name, she had come to him and bound him to her.

In the way of their kind she said, in the way of Sire and Childe, she said.

He was hers before he was his own.

She would not allow to him to feed, restraining him easily with her greater strength.

She enthralled him as he writhed and fought in the delirium of the metamorphosis.

She was all he knew, his sire or his oblivion.

She fed while he stood by, immobilized by her power, slavering and whining like a beast, his eyes wide and black and his fangs exposed.

She would not allow him to feed. But when she had dropped her prey dead at her feet, when the thunder of her prey's heart had stilled, when the blood scent hung like a fog of perfume around her, then, then she would open a wound in her breast, over her heart and allow her cursed blood to flow crimson into his waiting mouth.

Never enough, it was never enough, he hungered always. She held him in an iron grip, playing out that life giving substance like the potion and poison that it was, the elixir of life, the elixir of death.

Only when she was sure he was conquered and cowed and wholly her creature, did she lift her compulsion enough to tutor him in the ways of the night.

She would require him to hunt and capture her prey and relinquish it to her.

She would not allow him to feed. She compelled him to watch her drink. She compelled him to trap and torture her hapless prey and forbid him the taste of the blood he spilled.

She compelled him to love her, she took her pleasure of his body, whether he willed it or not.

Often when she was displeased with him she would force him to ground. His greatest fear, to wake in the dark again, entombed.

Slowly she edged him away from the beast, her lessons harsh always. He learned to control the beast in order to please her; he learned to subordinate his desires and hungers in order to placate her. Christina molded the soft clay of her Fledgling, her Prince and Bastard.

Finally came the night when she had elevated him.

That sweet time before dawn when after she had compelled him to love her, when after she had ridden him to her satisfaction, when after she had allowed him his release, then, he waited for her to grant him the taste of her blood.

She captured his eyes as she bared her pale breast. With one hand behind his neck she pulled his face close and plundered his mouth with her tongue. She pressed her tongue to his pallet, forcing his fangs to drop. His eyes darkened to the same glittering jet as her own as he watched her dimple the skin above her nipple with a finger tip.

"Here," she said, "You may bite here." When she had pulled his head down until his lips touched her flesh then his instincts had burst into bloom.

Flawlessly he pierced her skin and ruptured the pulsing vessel beneath, flooding his mouth with the molten crimson of her life, the life that made him. He had crawled up her body attached to her chest like the leech that he was.

For the first time he had drunk of an unrestricted flow. When the dawn had taken him, for the first time he sank into her oblivion sated.

When he woke the next night his Sire had raised him. He was no longer her creature, her pet. He was now her Childe and Consort.

For a further six months they had hunted and fed and loved in abandon. Their lovemaking was a fiery and instinctive escape to paradise. They feared no end to their desires or wickedness.

The fledgling was hers; she kept him, her purse never empty, her servants saw to all.

She had taken to allowing her fledgling to hunt on his own though she now forbade him to kill, fearing that it would raise the alarm against them.

Her childe was a quick study; he had caught the eye of a barmaid as she passed him by in the public house. He had compelled her to go into an alley and wait for him there. He had pushed her unceremoniously into a doorway, rumpling up her skirts and entering her roughly and biting her savagely and without finesse in his hunger.

One moment the blood was sweet in his mouth and her flesh clamped warm and tight around him, the next he was lying across the alley, his shoulder dislocated and coughing up his own blood, where his broken ribs had punctured his lung.

He snarled his challenge to Christina, as he struggled to his feet but she had made short work of rendering him incapacitated. The barmaid sat blank-eyed and staring amid her skirts.

His sire had often indulged herself by dressing in his clothing and masquerading as a human male, with her silken hair tucked up under her cap or held clubbed at the nape of her neck. She made a handsome if somewhat effeminate lad. So she appeared tonight as her servant stood by silently holding the bridles of two well trained horses.

The fledgling groaned aloud and vomited bright red blood when his broken ribs shifted as she lifted him so that he hung over the horse's back. The servant bound him swiftly in place as Christina came around and, taking his chin, twisted his face towards her. She kissed his lips most tenderly and whispered in his ear, "The year is up."

Then she mounted her horse, and leading his mount she cantered away noisily down the street. It was a nightmare journey for the Fledgling as he watched the road pass directly under his head and his body burned and convulsed. He lacked the resources to heal and he lapsed in and out of consciousness.

For two hours she rode first by wagon track and then by field, until at last she halted and dismounted in front of a farmer's cottage.

The farmyard dog barked wildly only to fall whimpering at Christina's glance.

The old man who emerged cautiously from the cottage door relaxed visibly when he saw the young lord. He came forward with his head respectfully bowed as Christina said, curtly imitating the cracked voice of a youth, "My companion fell from his horse, he is injured. Help me get him down."

As the old man came up alongside of the fledgling, Christina reached out a negligent hand and struck the farmer under the jaw. He crumpled to the ground in a boneless heap. She came around to the other side of the trembling horse and with her little silver knife cut the ties that bound her Childe's body. He slid gracelessly off the horse and landed with a grunt, thankfully on his uninjured shoulder.

The Fledgling rolled to his back and lay staring with unblinking black eyes at the stars.

Christina came into his field of vision, and snarled at him, "The year is up; I shouldn't have to do this." But she had flipped him over and dragged him by the back of his doublet until his cheek rested against the back of the old man's head.

"Surely you are strong enough to find the teat...little prince," she mocked him as he slowly nuzzled his way to the old farmer's whiskered neck and finally managed to sink his fangs.

She stood watching, hands on hips, as he drew greedily on the human. She said conversationally, "Stay out of my territory. If I see you again I will kill you."

The Fledgling snarled as she bent and reached towards him, a feral lifting of the lips to bare his embedded fangs, but she only grasped his wrist and sharply pulled his shoulder back into alignment.

When he came to, she was gone. His mouth was full of cooling blood and the old man's heart had slowed to an uneven rate. His need was great and the vampyre quickly resumed his feeding; only relinquishing his hold when the heart shuddered to a stop.

Bereft and in shock at his sudden desertion, after tipping the old man's body into the well, the vampyre secreted himself in the darkest corner of a root cellar behind the cow byre. There he hid for a night and two days, until he was forced by hunger and his instinct to flee his Sire's wrath, to leave his shelter.

_After she had left him it hadn't taken him very long to decide that he didn't want to be dead._


	2. Chapter 2

Once the Fledgling was away from his Sire, her influence slowly began to fade. He stumbled in answer to his instincts, northward through night after night, feeding where he might, and taking what he needed.

And he began to remember, as he travelled along rutted wagon tracks or through forest paths. Played out against the darkling sky and illuminated by the palely moon, memories of his human life began to unfold.

Memories of his father the King, jocular and dangerous, memories of court life, whispered sugared comments and thinly veiled contempt for the bastard, memories of the unexpected gift of Catherine's acceptance and her kindness to a lost young boy, who was the worldly evidence of her husband's infidelity.

In the dark of an open field, alone under the stars, he recovered the memory of his friend Surrey, a memory that brought him in anguish to his knees. He saw again as for the first time Surrey's crooked grin and dancing eyes. He saw them together laughing aloud at some witticism as they sat at their cups.

Never again...all this was lost to him, all this he had sacrificed to her.

Along with the memory of Surrey, came the remembrance of Mary, flower of the Howard family and his own blushing bride. As Henry sheltered from the approaching day in some cave, or ruin, or lay burrowed deep into a piled hay stack, he would remember images of happenings of their childhoods, her smooth dimpled cheeks and smiling face and quick wit. He remembered her soft hands and beribboned hair.

And he remembered when Christina had arrived at court, sloe eyed and beautiful, how she had allowed him to seduce her and how he had loved her enough to...

As the memories of his past life emerged, the Fledgling came to understand the true cost of his love. Night after night, when he had slaked the hunger that tortured him and as the dark miles passed behind him on his lonely northern journey cold tears stained the alabaster cheeks of the face he turned up to the moon.

***

He had been orphaned for more than two months as well as he could tell, the night air had grown more and more chill, and when he rose with the moon it was often to feel and scent the last fading warmth of the sun still resident in the golden drying grain of the fields as he brushed by.

He remembered more now, and his nights had taken on a somber routine. He would rise from his resting place and driven by his cursed hunger, he would hunt for prey. The night air was his ally and brought him the scent of the nearest living being; the breeze carried the sound of their pumping hearts. All else in his world would narrow to that sound and nothing else existed until the hunger was appeased. Hunger appeased with blood that was accompanied by either the slow and steady heartbeats of the beasts of the field or by the frantic music of the enthralled human heart. When he had drunk his fill, he would turn to the road.

As he travelled northward, he fingered the individual images of his human life as though they were the beads of a rosary. He moved from one memory to the next in a dismal pilgrimage.

He was damned, of this he was sure. His soul had been corrupted by love, yet how could love itself be evil?

He knew that were he to give himself over to the Church, the clerics would burn him.

"Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen."* The prayer had left his lips automatically, from years of heartfelt recitation.

He waited for Heaven's fury to fall upon him.

Surely God would not allow a creature such as himself the comfort of beseeching the Virgin's mercy.

Yet he was not consumed. It left him weak with relief. He began to pray nightly. In this simple act from his human past, some spark of his humanity was reborn.

Though it pained him, he stole, more than just the blood he needed. He stole to clothe his body; he stole to clothe the beast in the trappings of humanity.

Slowly he perfected his ability to control his appearance and his senses. Eventually he found that once he was fully sated with blood he could walk virtually undetected among humans, for longer and longer periods. The effort exhausted and pained him but as he moved northward, slowly his masquerade as Henry Richmond emerged from the dark.

When he was near to a town or village he would sometimes chance a few moments in the peaty warmth of a public house.

Playing the part of the traveler, the dissolute younger son of a minor noble house, he would sit with an untouched tankard before him and listen to the gossip of the world around him.

He heard rumor of the decrees of his father the King, of war and of…himself. Not by name but as dark and whispered stories of some silent terror that haunted the night.

He was at his best reckoning, halfway up the length of Scotland and approaching the eastern coastline not far from the small village of Ferryden when he first heard that his childhood friend and brother-in-law, Henry Earl of Surrey, had been sent by King Henry VIII, on a tour of Scotland.

The King ever kept a watchful eye on the lands to the north.

The rough men well sunk in drink scoffed at the news that Surrey and the young Lords who accompanied him had accepted the challenge of hunting the demon that was haunting the area. They had ridden out many evenings hoping to flush the monster from his hidden ways.

"Do they nae ken he's the de'il's ane?" the cooper's apprentice said.

Henry had pushed the frothy tankard away and made his way out into the night.

Am I the devil's own, he asked himself, has heaven forsaken me? _I should move on, away from here._And yet the thought that Surrey, his closest childhood friend and brother-in-law was nearby, created a heated longing in his breast. A second kind of hunger that had him turning towards the nearby fortified manor house of the local lord. Rising from the remains of Black Jack Castle were the new walls of Dunninald Castle. As quiet as a wraith he entered the gardens surrounding the building. He steered well clear of the stables.

Though he longed for a horse to ease his travels, his kind terrified all horses which had not been carefully taught through experience and glamour to ignore their instinctive fears.

When he had first been abandoned, in his effort to escape his Sire's territory, he had attempted to steal a horse from outside of an inn.

Though he had set the whole stable to whinnying and stamping, he had managed to clamber onto the back of a decent bay mare. With white eyes, she had twisted her head to look at the creature on her back and had promptly run off into the night, the vampyre clinging limpet-like to her back.

Had the forest not been so close, Henry might have ridden her into acceptance. Instead after ten minutes of being flayed by the whipping branches of the trees, a low slung branch had scrapped him from her back to land in the moss of the forest floor.

The sound of the thudding hooves had disappeared into the night. Worse than dogs, the horses could be relied upon to bell an alarm if he ventured too close.

Henry slipped quietly through the door and to the shadowed edge of the hall where the Lord was entertaining his guests. His eyes blurring with unshed tears, Henry could see Surrey, close to the fire, one hand raised in eloquent emphasis and the other held behind his back, his voice resonant with emotion, Surrey recited…

"Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew,

In prison pine, with bondage and restraint:

And with remembrance of the greater grief,

To banish the less, I find my chief relief."

The vampyre's gaze swung across the room as a sweet and light woman's voice said as she clapped her hands in appreciation, "Brother dear, I will never tire of your words."

The heart in his breast contracted painfully_. Mary, my God, it's Mary,_ he thought, withdrawing deeper into the shadows as he saw her trim figure, clothed in black, and her features limed by the golden light of the candles and fire.

_Dressed in black, as was Surrey, they are in mourning, still in black mourning for…me._ He faded quickly back out into the night, the weight of his guilt, crushing.

The vampyre fled through the trees and out onto the road. His carriage was upright and stiff as he moved woodenly along, the stolen warmth of another's life fueling his retreat.

_This then was the cost of his misplaced love, his friends and family mourned the monster. _

_* Holy Mary, Mother of God. Pray for us sinners,now and in the hour of our death._

_Note: The snippey of Verse that Surrey recites, is a poem that Henry Howard (Surrey) actually wrote about Henry Duke of Richmond._


	3. Chapter 3

He had been walking for than two hours sunk in his thoughts, when finally the Fledgling lifted his head. A low rumbling sound, advancing and retreating, like the breath of a slumbering giant, reached his ears.

Henry scented the night air and breathed in the trace of the sea. The rutted wagon track shortly emerged from the trees to wind ahead across the open grassy headland of Boddin Point, that moonlit, reached out towards the ocean.

He was about half way across the distance to the cliffs at the ocean's edge. The wind was blowing off the water, carrying with it the scent of the brine and the sea wrack. He had been sunk in his consideration of the sound of the ocean's breath when he suddenly lifted his head.

There was the distinctive sound of multiple horses coming fast over the ground. He half turned as he glanced over his shoulder, the wind whipping his curls around his face. At least ten men on horseback were coming quickly over the grasslands behind him, clods of earth flying from their horses' flashing hooves and the hounds surging out ahead.

_Surrey, God no!_ He thought. It was too late to conceal himself, his only option was to flee. He dropped his travel cloak to the ground and ran, knowing that once the horsemen saw the speed with which he moved, they would know him for what he was.

He lips were pulled back in a snarl as he heard the hounds behind fall on his cloak, ripping it to shreds as the voices of the huntsmen called out to one another.

"Cai, Andrew, to the left…cut off its escape." Henry heard the command as Surrey's voice rang out in the night air.

A hiss split the air beside his head and an arrow buried itself in the ground to his left. He was approaching the bluff's edge now, and was running out of earth. The night air suddenly stretched empty out in front of him as he looked down to the surf that crashed white and hungry on the rocks below.

_I cannot…I will not allow Surrey to know what I have become_, he thought as he was brought to bay at the cliff's edge.

He could scent the heat of the hunt in the dogs that circled him belling and snapping. He hunched over in a protective stance and bared his fangs, snarling, his eyes as black as the pits of hell.

One hound lunged forward and the vampyre hefted it from underneath as it jumped for his throat, sending it howling to fly over the cliff edge to the rocks below.

There was a sharp and burning pain in his chest. When he looked down it was to see the fletching of an arrow protruding from his shirt only an inch above his heart.

The horsemen were almost on him and the hounds circled and yammered, driven into frenzy by the scent of his blood.

The Fledgling spread his arms wide, as though he could fly or as though he could drift on the sea breeze and allowed himself to tip backwards into the empty night at the edge of the cliff.

***

The churning, cold water surged forwards and back, pushing him up against the sharp rocks that sliced and bruised his flesh and then sucking him away into its icy embrace again. He was cold, cold but for the burning above his heart and the slow kindling heat of the hunger, low in his belly. The cold and the dark claimed him.

***

He could feel the heat on the side of his face and behind his closed lids the vampyre could sense the brightness.

His instincts flared and his body jerked with his flight response, _the day was upon him_…

Fire shot through his chest at the movement.

"Peace, Nightwalker," a soft and feminine voice whispered. "The dawn is yet an hour off, you are safe here."

The firelight was golden on her skin when Henry opened his eyes. The material of the clothing she wore was coarse against the smooth silk of her flesh, where she sat on the ground opposite him. Her shawl fell down as she moved across towards him, reaching out.

The Fledgling shrank back with a hiss and his fangs dropped.

"Peace," she said again. "The huntsmen will not find you inside this cave; neither will the sea claim you. It is my own sanctuary that I share with you, Nightwalker. Let me tend to your wound, before you sleep."

Henry raised a hand to his chest, and in a voice that was rough from the salt water he had swallowed said, "I will heal. How do you know what I am and knowing, choose to…assist me?"

She smiled as she sat back on the dry bracken on the floor of the cave and drew her shawl tight around her shoulders again.

"How is it that I would not know you, child of the night? Am I not myself the child of the sea? Inside this cave no treacherous human heart beats."

Henry frowned and lifted his head drawing in a long breath, he rolled her scent around and examined it, his blue eyes narrowed as he realized _she was not human_, _was not prey_.

His eyes travelled slowly about the cave's walls and low ceiling and to the opening that led away to a tunnel that curved beyond his sight. He could feel, somewhere above, the slow approach of the sun.

She shifted slightly and his eyes flew back to hers, warm brown and full of compassion and secret knowledge.

"What are you?" the vampyre whispered.

"Here the people call us the Selchies," she said, smiling sadly.

Henry's eyes widened. In his eighteenth year, and dead and risen again he was still not so far from his nurse's knee that he had forgotten the cradle stories. "Seal Maiden," he whispered.

"She barked a laugh that had nothing of humor in it, "No Nightwalker. Selchie I may be, but a maiden no longer. A fisherman holds my skin and keeps me by him…to wife," she said shaking her head sadly. "He will not return to me the skin that he stole, and so I cannot return to the sea, but must stay in human form on the shore."

The vampyre considered this as he felt the lethargy of the day steal over him.

"And you help me because…?" he questioned.

"I help you because, like me you are other than human, and the humans who pursue you, mean you harm," she said, her eyes warm and open and tinged with a wistful curiosity.

"You will be safe here; I promise you. I will block the entrance when I leave. The day will not find you here, neither will the huntsmen. Tomorrow night I will return with some clothing for you and you will be free to go your way."

Henry glanced down at the damp, salt encrusted tatters that remained of his clothing. "I thank you," he said.

"Oh don't worry," she smiled, "it will be naught as fine as the young laird's clothes that you were wearing."

Having said so she rose, and crouching, made her way from the cave. He could hear the sounds of brush being piled against the entrance.

When she was gone the Fledgling, groaning, turned on his side amid the bracken that formed his bed. He was healing; he could feel it as he could feel the sun swing over the lip of the horizon.

When the world is dark again, he thought, I will wake heal...

***

A mournful bleating filled his ears as the distinctive pungent scent of goat filled his lungs with his first indrawn breath.

The vampyre opened his eyes to regard the underside of the goat's jaw moving slowly around and around as the beast chewed its cud directly above him. He turned his head to the side and glimpsed the bulging udders between the goat's legs.

Pushing the goat aside, Henry levered himself to his elbow.

The selchie sat across from him, grinning, holding the nanny goat's tether.

"I brought you something to drink," she said, nodding towards the goat.

"I thank you," Henry replied, as the hunger roused plaintive within, "but…I do not drink milk."

The seal woman smiled broadly, "Oh, the milk is for me Vampyre, her blood is for you. You can drink other than human blood, can you not?" she asked in a matter of fact tone, as she handed the tether and then a bowl and a sharp little knife across to Henry.

She placed her bowl beneath the nanny and nimbly stroked the teats. Soon enough the bowl brimmed with warm frothy milk.

She sat back and held the bowl to her lips, looking directly at Henry's face, her eyes peat brown and shining with curiosity and amusement. He watched as she dipped her head to sip the warm rich milk and when she set the bowl aside she used the back of her hand to wipe the foam from her lips. "Drink," she urged him.

After a moment's hesitation the Fledgling laid aside the bowl and knife and pulled the goat to his chest and though she bleated at being restrained the goat relaxed against him. He pushed her head gently to one side and eased his fangs into the taunt neck. As the warm blood flooded his mouth he closed his eyes, shutting out all external stimuli. He drew gently and with care, measuring the flow of the blood across his tongue until he knew he could take no more without harm.

He opened black eyes to see the selchie's deep brown gaze regarding him beneficently over the rim of the bowl.

"I did not know..." she said quietly, and then asked more briskly, "Will her blood suffice?"

He withdrew his fangs and in a mirror of her earlier action swiped the back of his hands across his lips. The goat sprang a few steps distance as Henry released her and then she began to nose amid the bracken on the cave floor.

Henry nodded as his fangs retracted and the darkness lifted from his eyes. "Until I can find my rightful prey, yes, I thank you, madam."

There was a moment of silence then and the selchie sat comfortable with her arms wrapped about her knees. She finally stirred, and handed him a bundle of plain clothing from the basket at her side, saying, "The sea fog is on the strand tonight. Would you travel on?"

The Fledgling shook his head, setting the long auburn curls bouncing. He made a small moue with his sensuous lips and then said, "No, not tonight. There is a fisherman I wish to see, about a seal skin."

***

The cottage was neat and well kept, with the orange flickering light of a peat fire wavering through the open door.

They approached from the pebbled beach. The small boat drawn up and overturned above the tide line was the testament to the trade of her master.

As they passed over the rocks below the cliffs three seals hauled themselves out of the water and barked a hoarse song to the fog diffused moon. The selchie gave no sign, but the vampyre saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes.

When they had returned the goat to the pen, they entered the cottage. The selchie crossed quickly to the hulk of a man who lay half asleep in a drunken slouch on a stool beside the small fire on the hearth.

The smell of fish, sour beer, peat smoke and human sweat assailed the vampyre's senses as he stood in the shadows.

"There you are my pretty, my selchie wife," the drunk exclaimed in a slurred voice full of fondness. "Come here to me, my wife," the fisherman said, grasping at her arm and tightening his grip as she pulled back. He dragged her forward, raising a grasping hand to her breast. "You are home from the shore. Come to my arms, my selchie."

Between one moment and the next, the vampyre had the drunk by the throat and pressed against the cottage wall.

The drunk's clouded eyes widened as he looked into the face of the Nightwalker**. **His heartquailed at the sight of the pitiless black eyes and sharp hungry fangs. The sudden warm smell of urine floated into the room.

Henry leaned in close and with a snarl said, "Where is it? Where is her skin, human? Tell me!"

The drunkard shook his head no and closed his eyes even as the vampyre exerted his will compelling the human to speak.

Henry asked in a hissing whisper as he brought his face close to the fisherman's, "Have you kept the selchie's skin?"

The drunk nodded miserably and his blurry gaze found his wife who stood across the room, her hands covering her mouth.

In the fire lit shadows of the cottage the selchie heard the sibilant voice of the vampyre as he compelled her captor to speak.

"Where have you secreted the skin?" Henry tightened his control. The drunk shook his head no, miserably, even as he said aloud.

"It is at a cobbler's shop, through the green curtain, there is a small room. There is a small flat chest that is . . ." he swallowed once as he struggled but then continued, "under the bed. I kept it safe, I kept it safe, a spotted silver seal skin folded and wrapped..."

The vampyre cast a glance over his shoulder. The selchie was already running out the door.

He turned back to the drunken fisherman and his black eyes were cold, his lips stretched in a toothy, predatory grin. "I hunger..." he said.

***

It was nearing dawn as the vampyre made his way back to the selchie's sanctuary.

He had though that the Selchie might be there but the cave was cold and empty. He lowered himself to the floor and amid the rustling of the bracken, arranged his body in preparation of the dawn.

He was flushed with the blood of the human who had imprisoned the selchie. Linked to the human as he fed, he had impressions of the fisherman's thoughts and emotions. The human was a lout and a drunkard, but he had loved the seal maid with a tragic desperation that in the end had caused the Fledgling to spare his life.

_Have I spared him or condemned him to a life without her_? The vampyre wondered fuzzily, as the dawn filled the sky.

***

He felt her palm on his chest as he drew his first breath and for a moment his heart quailed at the thought that his Sire was beside him.

When he opened his eyes it was to the soft brown gaze of the selchie and the shadowed overhanging ceiling of the cave.

"I felt it," she said, her eyes shining, and she patted his chest. "I felt the moment that your life returned. You are truly a wonder, Nightwalker."

Sliding back, Henry propped himself on his elbows, frowned and said, "A wonder, is not what I would name it."

"I have come to bid you farewell and to offer you my thanks," the selchie woman said with a smile. "This night I am returning to my home."

At the reminder of the fisherman's blood, the vampyre's eyes darkened to black and the tips of his fangs protruded. He bowed his head and then looked up to regard her from under his brow.

"There is no debt between us...Selchie," the Fledgling said slowly. "You helped me and protected me, when you did not need to do so. In return I helped you to find your skin, now you are free."

The selchie nodded solemnly and then she said suddenly, "My name is Rona."

The vampyre was taken aback, he had heard that the gifting of one's name was said to be important among the others.

"My name is Henry," he replied, "Henry...Fitzroy."

***

He stood by, on the rocks and watched as Rona shed her clothing, until she stood shimmering pale in the cold moonlight. She smiled as she shook out the bundled skin and drew it shawl like around her shoulders.

The ocean breathed out a long sigh, foaming up to the shore.

She nodded once to Henry, her eyes shining, and then her outline blurred and softened in the vampyre's eyes, re-solidifying as the sleek and spotted form of a grey seal.

Henry stepped forward to lay his hand flat against the smooth pelt. The seal turned her head to regard him with Rona's eyes, peat brown and full of mystery and compassion. Then she slipped into the sea, and was gone.

Henry stood for a moment watching the empty ocean moving restlessly under the moon and then he turned towards the town.


	4. Chapter 4

Henry, Earl of Surrey, turned his horse's head to the east and with a wave of his arm signaled the men with him to follow. They cantered along the wagon track, the horses blowing and nodding against the bit and the hounds milling about underfoot, their noses to the ground. They emerged from the woods into the moonlit grass of the headlands at Boddin Point. The sun had long ago dropped behind the tree tops and the moon was climbing to her rightful throne as Queen of the Sky.

Drover had been a most excellent hound, fearless and strong, and the demon had tossed him to his death over the edge of the cliff two nights ago. Surrey mourned his loss. Though he had seen the demon's dark shape silhouetted against the moon, with arms spread, drop over the same cliff, without the creature's body he was not convinced that they had put an end to the threat. Had they not found Drover's broken body washed up on the beach the next morning?

Dragging on the reins he turned his horse's head as he reached the cliff side and dismounted. That night, though they had ridden in haste to the south and had finally been able to descend to the beach, there had been no sign of the demon. The hounds had lost the trail. They had spent the next night scouring the beaches to the south of the Ferryden. Nothing, not a trace of the scent...perhaps the creature had moved on.

Surrey kicked through the coarse grass at the cliff's edge...nothing. I should never have believed the drunken lout with his sour breath and the odor of fish hanging about him. A vampyre stole his selchie wife from him and then drank his blood. He said that we would find the creature here by the cliffs but nothing.

He moved to lean out gazing down on the white surf that crashed and foamed on the rocks below, the material of his rich black cloak flowed on the wind around him. No human could have survived that fall, but the demon spawned? There was no way to be sure, not until he had the demon's head.

He reached into the pocket hanging by his side and pulled the tattered remnant of the creature's cloak that he had saved from the dogs. He signaled his Houndsman to whistle up the hounds and as they approached he handed his Houndsman the scrap. He swung back into the saddle and cantered to the rest of his party as the Houndsman, after giving the dogs the scent, dispersed them to search with a broad swing of his arm.

Noses to the ground the pack quested, working in unison searching for the scent in ever widening circles.

It was Belle who sent up the first alarm, her voice swollen with the sound that said she had picked up the scent, the sound that sent the rest of the pack swarming back across the headlands towards the trees.

The horses were wheeled about and curses rang in the air as the hunters realized that the creature's trail led back towards Ferryden and away from the cliffs. Soon the men were pounding across the turf with cloaks billowing out behind as they strove to catch up with the hounds.

_Thank God,_ Surrey thought, _that_ _I had the foresight to move Mary and her attendant to the church. The Spawn of Hell cannot venture onto sacred ground so they will be safe in the sanctuary of the church._

The riders were forced to slow their headlong flight as they entered the path between the trees. The hunters could hear the hounds ahead in the woods. The barking took on the distinctive sound of their questing, they had lost the scent.

***

Pushing aside the reeds the vampyre emerged from the stream soaked to the skin and shivering.

The night was too cold to be wading chest deep through the water. He had been listening to the excited barking of the hounds in the distance. When their barking had assumed the persistent trumpeting of the pack on the scent, then he had taken to the water.

Twice he had left the stream to move in a blur, through the trees to lay false trails and then retraced his steps to wade shivering into the water again.

He lifted his head, listening carefully. The voices of the hounds floated to him on the night air, they were barking again as they circled having lost his scent...after a few moments they renewed the sustained note of the chase.

He had skirted the edge of the town where he had heard the shouts of the men in the streets, and seen the torches. He feared that the villagers were raised against him, the baying of the hounds on the wind a strong incentive to violence.

He could run, and faster than any mortal, but not forever, neither could he be caught without shelter when the day approached. His sanctuary in the cave by the cliffs was cut off by the approaching hunt. The Fledgling ran a hand through his hair. He needed to hide, hide in a place where they could not find him.

The bulk of the church was clearly visible to his eyes, separated from the town on a small rise perhaps a mile distant. They would not suspect that he could enter holy ground. The church would be his refuge. He needed to be rid of the hounds.

The Fledgling moved quickly and quietly between the shelter of houses as he edged back towards the stream and a small boat drawn up on the shore.

His attention was focused on the voices of the hounds and the final few yards of open space between his last shelter and the boat, Henry failed to hear the heartbeat of the human until he was upon him.

He was bowled over from behind and went down onto his face in the earthen street, the weight of a large body pressing down on top of him.

The vampyre twisted and writhed away from the clutching beefy hands as the stink of fish and ale surrounded him. Henry half turned his upper body, his fingers scrabbling on the ground for purchase.

He hissed aloud and his fangs dropped as he saw the flash of movement in his peripheral vision and then felt the explosion of pain in his shoulder as the wood of the stake pierced his flesh.

In shock and wide eyed, he looked into the face of the selchie's fisherman husband. The human's face was contorted with grief and pain, his heart hammering and his hand still grasping the stake that protruded from the Fledgling's shoulder. "Gone," he whispered into Henry's face, "gone back to the sea. It's all your fault Vampyre."

The Fledgling reached out his good hand and with a twist snapped the human's neck in one smooth movement, and once again the night quieted.

For a moment, Henry sat, head bowed and panting on the ground, gathering his resolve. Then he curled his fingers around the end of the stake that stood from his shoulder. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood; he breathed in deeply once more and then setting his lips, pulled the stake free.

The world grayed and spun, tilting sideways. _I must not pass out_, he thought, _or my end will be a stake through the heart and burned on the pyre._

Struggling to his feet the vampyre staggered, laboriously dragging the human's body to the stream's edge and rolling it inside the boat. Using his dwindling strength and all his weight he pushed the boat into the water and then wading to his hips flung himself in, to lie atop of the corpse. The stream flowed placidly onward and the boat and its "passengers" were caught up in its current and went drifting away downstream in the dark.

His shoulder burned and pained him, he needed to feed, but even a Fledgling knew that he could not drink the blood of the dead. As they drifted the vampyre laid his head down on the grimy shirt of the corpse, but he could take no comfort in the fact that the dead man's flesh was still warmer than was his own.

When the boat was almost parallel to the church he slipped over the side into the chest deep water, the boat drifted on into the dark without him.

There was a thicket of gnarled and hoary willow trees that clung close to the stream, their boughs reaching out over the water. The vampyre hauled himself, dripping, up onto such a bough and then nimbly picked his way across, and then from that tree, he crossed to another and then another, never touching the ground that was cloaked in the yellow drifts of last year's willow leaves. In this way he was able to move close enough to leap to the high stone wall that ran around the perimeter of the church yard and from there to the roof of a low building that leaned up against the church proper.

Looking back over his shoulder, he felt sure that the hounds would not be able to pick up his scent where he had left the stream.

Tilting his head back he could see the barely discernible flickering candlelight escaping through the window openings above. His shoulder pained him greatly but he could feel the tissue slowly regenerating, beneath the still open wound. He could hear the distant barking of the hounds on the wind. Spreading his fingers wide, his strong hands finding purchase easily, the vampyre swarmed up the wall and slipped through one of the openings into the shadowed rafters.

As he clung to an upright beam, the Fledgling's eyes were drawn down to a painted carving of the Blessed Mother, standing with arms outstretched in a niche below. Her smiling face was illuminated by the bank of candles at her feet. He hardly dared to look upon her and yet he felt drawn inexorable towards her.

He lowered himself carefully down the ornate woodwork of the interior of the church. His fingers clamped over the carvings, he glanced continually over his shoulder at the Virgin's face, expecting to see her countenance alter to one of loathing or disgust. But the smooth planes of her cheeks and brow stayed in place and her gentle and welcoming smile beckoned him onward.

For a moment he feared as his feet touched the floor, that he would be expelled from this sacred place. He breathed out a heartfelt sigh of relief when he was not. From the shadows he could hear the soft voices of women and human heartbeats in the transept but approaching the altar was not his goal at this point.

A part of the Fledgling's mind calculated that he would be able to seek shelter from the day in the tombs below the church, but the most part of his thoughts were focused on the image of the Virgin glowing softly lit across the nave.

Hugging the wall of the triforium at the back of the nave, he slipped from shadow to shadow pausing only to go unsteadily to one knee and cross his breast as he passed by the altar. The fingers of his right hand stained red where they brushed his shoulder.

The closer he approached the statue the more he became convinced that the Virgin's calm gaze followed him, the soft bow of her lips encouraging him, one who had fallen so far… His eyes narrowed in the light of the candles lit at her feet, and he fell heavily to his knees in front of her. Astounded that she had allowed his approach, despite the stain upon his soul, he bowed his forehead to the ground at her feet, his wet hair falling in ringlets from his neck to the floor. He could hear nothing but his own strange and slow heartbeat and a ringing, as though the bells were calling all to Mass…


	5. Chapter 5

"I don't want to touch him, Mary; he's so dirty and wet. We should call the priest."

_Why is the Blessed Virgin arguing with one of her angels_? Henry thought muzzily... _perhaps I have offended her._

"Oh Mae, the old priest has long since gone to his cot. Can you not just do as I say? Just nudge him and see if he is dead."

_Yes blessed mother I am dead...yet not. I have sinned; I have drunk the blood of immortal life. _

There was gnawing ache in his gut and a sharper ache in his shoulder, and his knees pained him as though he had been doing penance for far too long. _This can't be Heaven there should be no pain in Heaven, I am in purgatory then, but why is the Blessed Virgin..._

"Mary don't..."

"Be quiet Mae, we cannot leave him here if he's dead, kneeling at the Holy Mother's feet."

_Yes Blessed Mother, it is true I am dead._ His forehead head hurt where it rested against something cool and hard..._I should open my eyes but it seems so hard...._

The Fledgling felt a soft and tentative touch on his shoulder. There was the gentle rustling of silks and a softly perfumed scent surrounded him.

"Young sir, you must rise, you have been kneeling here for more than an hour, since we first spied you, are you ill? Let us help you."

_Mother Mary, forgive me, please, _he thought as he raised himself stiffly so that his palms rested on the floor. He could see the blue wooden hem of the Virgin's cloak beyond the candles. "Mary," he whispered the Virgin's name as he turned towards the hand that again touched his shoulder, "Sancta Maria," as he turned his face to look up from under his curls at a candle lit vision. "Maria, Sancta Maria...Mary?"

The vampyre's mind cleared in an instant, Mary, his Mary, his wife... He slid scrabbling backwards across the floor, scattering candles around him as he fetched up against the statue's feet, looking for all the world like he was trying to hide behind the Virgin's skirts. He just managed to keep his aspect human, as he stared from the floor, up into her shocked face.

Any thought that she might not know him, died, as her mouth formed a perfect round 'O,' and then she sank to her knees. She moved quickly towards him, reaching out her trembling hand to touch his pale cheek. "Henry," she whispered, "Henry...

"I thought you were dead..." Suddenly she rushed into him and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him and petting him and embracing him as she repeated, "I thought you were dead, they said that you..."

Her tender caresses and her patting against his chest became more forceful as her tearful voice rose..."I thought you were dead, I thought you were...Dead!" She began to shout, slapping at him now.

He caught her wrists as she struck him, the tears flowing unchecked down her cheeks.

"I thought you were...dead," she whispered through her tears, her blue eyes meeting his, "Harry and I we thought...Oh my God, Harry...do you know what your death did to my brother?"

She pulled one hand free from his grasp and slapped him hard across the face, her hand leaving a red impression on his pale cheek.

Her companion Mae was agitated and shifting from foot to foot, wringing her hands, "Mary, Mary are you ill? What has come over you? Are you bewitched? Shall I call the priest?" She fluttered ineffectually about…

Mary turned her head away from Henry and said in a sharp voice, "Margret! Be quiet now! Go to the choir and sit down."

"But Mary I can't leave you alone with this...peasant."

"Margret, for once in your life, do as I say. Leave us!"

Mary turned back to Henry and her face was calmer, but the tears still flowed unbidden down her cheeks.

"How could you do this?" she asked in a broken voice. She ran a gentle hand down the side of his face and then her eyes fell to the blood staining the front of his shirt. "You're hurt."

The vampyre finally found his voice, "I will heal. Mary, it would have been better if you had never seen me here. Better if you had gone on believing that I..."

"That you were dead, when you are not?" she asked.

The vampyre rose to his feet and pulled her gently up beside him; he did not relinquish his hold on her arm. He could feel the flow of her blood beneath his fingertips and the warmth of her living flesh. He tested her scent. He committed it to memory. It was a sweet softness all her own, underlying the floral infusion that she daubed at wrist and throat.

His gaze travelled unwillingly from her eyes to rest to at the pulsing beat just beside the hollow of her throat and hovered there entranced. His lips parted slightly and his pupils dilated outwards as the surroundings faded away until that throbbing patch of silken skin filled his senses. His instincts stirred…

"I am dead," he said abruptly as he looked back to her face, "I died more than a year ago, Mary, you are right to…mourn me." He ran his knuckles across the black silk of her gown.

"No," she said as she pressed in close against him, "you are here with me now, solid and real. You are no spirit, no shade returned from the grave." She laid her hand over his heart. "You see, I can feel your…heart…."

The Fledgling held himself still as she waited. He searched her face, when his heart contracted once under her palm, she drew in a breath and the tears started in her eyes.

"She did this to you, didn't she? The black haired bitch who ensorcelled you…your paramour," Mary said with sudden insight.

Henry pulled her to him in a two armed embrace. "I'm sorry Mary, I'm sorry for having treated you the way I have. I loved you, I always loved you. Ours would have been a good marriage, in childhood you were always my friend and confident and…" he paused as she began to cry in earnest.

She laid her head on his shoulder and he could feel the beating of her heart reverberate in his own chest. Her head tilted to one side, he could see the glowing tracery of her veins as they crept across the pale skin of her neck and chest. He closed his eyes and lifted her away from him.

"Whatever the witch did Henry, we can see the priest, or the bishop. We could take you to Rome, I'm sure there is something…" she trailed off as he shook his head; the look on his face told her there was no hope.

"The Church would burn me Mary, for the abomination that I am," he said.

She buried her face in his shoulder. She was shaking her head. "Harry will help, he would go to hell and back for you, my love."

The vampyre allowed his eyes to darken and the ivory weaponry of his kind to emerge. He put a finger under her chin and gently lifted her face. At her indrawn breath he said, "Surrey must never know Mary, never! Do you not hear the music of the hounds on the airs? He hunts for me, all unknowing, even now."

Mae's tremulous voice sounded close to hand, "Mary, you must come away, it's not right not…Saint Michael defend us!" she said as she saw Mary in the vampyre's arms.

Henry turned his face towards her with a hiss, capturing her gaze with his own. His voice emerged as powerful and as resonant as the priest at the altar, as compelling as the lash and as complicit as the words of a lover.

"You saw nothing, you heard nothing. You fell asleep at your prayers. Now go to the choir and sit and wait for your mistress!" Mae turned and wandered slowly away.

He had expected Mary to recoil, expected her scream, or faint, instead her arms slid round his waist and pulled him closer. "You will not do that to me, Henry, Duke of Richmond," she said drawing herself up. "I will not lose you again, I cannot," she said heatedly, though her chin quivered.

Henry, the once Duke of Richmond shook his head, "No I will not do that to you, my love. But you must go. And I must seek a sanctuary from my enemy the day."

He made to move out of her grasp, but she bunched her hands in the coarse damp material of his shirt.

"Promise me," she said, "Promise me on all that is Holy, that you will come to me tomorrow night Henry. That as a trust against the cold empty nights ahead, that you will come to me, and take me to wife once more."

He had quieted in her arms and when she looked into his face the features she remembered looked back.

"Promise me," she insisted.

He lifted her hand to his lips. His blue eyes were smoky and troubled in his smudged and beautiful face.

"Against the cold and empty nights to come…I so promise you, my wife."

Mary turned, and picking up her skirts, fled across the nave calling to Mae to rouse as she ran.

The vampyre turned again to the gently smiling Virgin and sank slowly down to his aching knees.

"Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum…."*

***

* Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee...


	6. Chapter 6

The night was velvet black as the vampyre stood beneath the trees. He watched and waited, still for so long that the tiny creatures of the night had taken up their chorus again. The house had slowly settled as the moon had climbed high in the sky.

He was uncertain, last night it had seemed simple and right as he had uttered his promise under the Virgin's spreading arms. Tonight his instincts struggled and warred with his heart.

Earlier, he had fed not once but twice, slipping into two separate cottages. He had wanted to be sated, his flesh to be warm when he...he ran his hand through his hair, I am as nervous as a bridegroom, he thought.

He had already found the window that was Mary's, following her scent as though it were a map drawnon the air.

Enough! He sped across the grass and was in through her window before he could question himself further.

The room was dimly illuminated by the red light of the banked fire. The walls were hung with tapestries and Mary's travel chest sat at the foot of the four poster bed.

The hangings of the bed were pulled closed, but the vampyre knew that Mary lay within, her heart beat steady and slow; she was not frightened, but neither was she sleeping.

He listened carefully; there were no other heartbeats in the room. He went stealthy to the door, which was bolted on the inside. He could catch the fainted trace of Mae's scent, and he thought _Mary_ has sent her to sleep in the anteroom.

Finally, having assured himself of his safety, the Fledgling silently approached the bed. He parted the hangings and looked into the dark recesses of the interior.

His wife lay with her hair spread in soft waves across the pillow. She lay with her arms across her chest and he saw the glitter of the fire's light in on the surface of her eyes. She turned her face towards him and her lips bowed in a sweet and welcoming smile. "My Prince," she whispered as she had on the nights they had first lain in their marriage bed together, on the nights before his Sire.

He climbed to the bed and crawled up beside her until his face hovered above hers. He knew she could not see him, but the vampyre could see her clearly. His lips bowed in the same smile that graced her face. He could hear the calm beating of her heart. Her scent in the enclosed area of the bed surrounded him. He breathed her in, no fear, only excitement and arousal and...Sorrow.

"My Lady," he said as he traced her brow with his fingers, trailing them down along her jaw to rest at the hollow of her throat.

Mary raised herself in the bed and her hands went to the ties at the neck of the coarse shirt he wore. She frowned slightly at the rough texture under her fingers, and she quickly loosened the ties and leaning close, she reached around behind him to pull the hem up and over his head. He bowed his head as his curls settled once more on his bare shoulders. Her soft fingers returned to his chest, and she traced out the sculpted muscles of his arms and back with her fingertips. Sighing, she laid her head on his shoulder turning her face to his throat, her cheek soft against his skin. "Henry," she whispered as he pulled his hands free of his sleeves and took her by the shoulders.

He took possession of her lips then and though he had meant to be gentle, at the sweetness of her willing flesh beneath him, he pushed her down onto the bed and as her lips parted he plundered her mouth with his own, his kisses bruising in their intensity and infectious with his sudden need. His hands roamed over her shoulders and face, eventually tangling in her hair. He threw back the linens in a single move leaving Mary prone on the bed in her night dress. He swung his leg over her and straddling her hips, reared back away from her, a shimmering pale shape that hovered hungry above her.

"Mary I..."

"Hush, my husband," she said as she raised her hands to the ties at the neckline of her night dress, "this is a night that I thought never to see again. This that we do between us is a memory that I will take into the dark. I had thought you gone from me and the comfort of your body lost to me forever..."

The fine stitches of the nightdress gave way under the strength of the vampyre's fingers. The delicate embroidered fabric was torn away baring her torso to the navel. Henry slid his hands beneath her back and lifted her to his chest in a fierce embrace. He held her tight against him as his lips brushed hers and then dropped to her throat.

For once the beast subsided. His lips and tongue passed without pause or remark over the silk of her throat and then lower still to her chest.

Here he paused a long moment as the image of his Sire filled his mind, _the pale expanse of the flesh above her breast and the tiny silver knife, the thin line of crimson where she fed him. _

Mary lifted a hand inquiringly to his cheek.

He banished Christina from his mind, he banished her image, he banished her 'lessons' and the skills he had acquired in his attempts to please her.

He called to mind the joy that Mary and he had first found in their marriage bed, the innocence of their passion. He called to mind the young husband he had been.

His hands pushed the fabric of her nightdress to the mattress and he lifted her, sliding the gown away to fall discarded on the floor. Mary's hands ran over his muscled chest as his fingers worked at the fastenings of his clothing.

She pinched his erect nipples hard, eliciting a groan and his eyes flew to the wicked grin on her face. "Did I hurt you my Lord?" she asked playfully. He nodded his head silently and then returned to his work.

When he was as naked as she, he moved to between her legs and bent over her as she lay on her back. She raised her arms above her head in a pose of complete trust and submission to his will. His sex jumped and quivered as he lowered himself upon her.

He could feel the entrance to her heated depths just touching his tip. He bent his head to her breast and laved her nipples each in turn, gently with the soft surface of his tongue. He watched raptly as they tightened further in response to his efforts and the cool night air. He could scent her arousal and could feel the increasing wetness of the place they were soon to be joined. To test himself, he laid his blunted teeth against her skin, breathing in deeply of the scent of her passion. _The beast slumbered_.

He rolled to one hip as he brought his hand down to part her folds, stroking softly, and at the slick smooth wetness of her, he eased the tip of a single finger into her. She sighed and lifted her hips towards his touch, drawing the length of his finger up inside her. Henry held completely still as she pulsed tightening and loosening around that smallest of joining.

"Please my love," the voice of her heart begged, "please."

Withdrawing his finger he used his hand to guide himself to her opening. He pushed in an inch as he gazed down into her face and then another. She watched him, her arms held relaxed above her head on the mattress. _I will be gentle, I will be careful, the trust she offers me is…_

The gurgling growl that escaped her shocked him as her hips ground downward, driving him deep inside her. Her hands flew down to clamp with a fierce intent on his buttocks, drawing him up towards her with a strength he would not have thought she possessed as she raised her shoulders from the bed.

Her hunger called to his own as he fell forward on her. He withdrew from that most intimate of embraces only to return again and again faster and faster. She angled her hips up where he was cradled between her thighs.

He lay with his head to one side of hers and he could hear her soft sighs and groans flow from her mouth. He had no other thought than to bunch his muscles and thrust into that tightening wet embrace and then withdraw as she relaxed then to bunch and thrust again and again. She shuddered as he touched some secret place within, answering his thrusts with her own.

She arched her head back, lifting her chin as she tightened hard around him in her release. With a final thrust and then a series of spasmodic jerks he followed her down into the abyss.

He could feel the rise and fall of her chest beneath him, and the hammering of her heart as it began to slow. Her skin was painted with the sheen of sweat and the short hair around her face was plastered to her cheeks. She was beautiful, and she was his, his wife.

He need only turn his head to the taunt line of her throat; he could sense the blood that pounded through her veins. He could feel the ache of his fangs at her proximity. She laid her hands flat against his chest and pushed up indicating wordlessly that she wished him to lift his weight off her.

Obligingly he pulled back. Though when he moved to withdraw, she tightened her thighs around him and bid him, "Stay," in a breathy voice. Suspended on his forearms above her, he bent his tousled head to lightly kiss her lips once, twice and then three times.

He withdrew and as he turned to lie on his back, she turned with him, resting her chin on his chest. He could feel the vibration of her words against his heart.

"I thought never to have this again," she said. "I will never whisper love's words to another, Henry. You were my only love."

He brought his arm down around her shoulder. "Mary, you know that I cannot stay, even now the dawn approaches and I must seek my sanctuary." He turned a curl of her hair around his fingers idly, marveling at its texture.

"Will you come to me again, tomorrow eve?" she asked him, turning her face towards him...

***

For three nights the vampyre lay with his wife in the confines of the bed behind the drawn hangings.

Before the dawn of the third day she pressed a kiss to his lips as he lay beneath her. Mary now knew more of the habits of Vampyres than most humans would ever know. And she knew that now she and Henry must part. She and her brother were returning to the south. Henry was resuming his northward journey as the lands to the south were forbidden him.

He had shown her all and told her much in his efforts to dissuade her from vowing never to take another. She would not be dissuaded.

On this last night she had pressed her blood upon him and he had refused as he had before, until she had made a small cut at the base of her thumb. As her blood welled up red, to drip onto the counterpane, his eyes had darkened and he had brought their clasped hands to his lips. He had drunk but a little before he had laved the cut to stop the bleeding. He had looked, hesitant, into her face, but saw only the same unshakeable devotion, that tore at his heart.

When they stood together by the window in the last few moments they had, Mary drew over her head the chain of a silver cross that hung between her breasts. She slipped the chain and cross over Henry's head and when it lay glinting in the moonlight on his breast, she covered it with her hand.

"My husband," she said, "come to me when and if you can, I will always welcome you. Henry, never doubt that you are God's own. She lifted the cross and brought it to her lips. Did the Virgin herself not bless our union?"

***

The next night, the Fledgling stood beneath the trees fingering the silver cross that hung at his neck and watching the empty window of the room she had occupied. Mary and Surrey had ridden away while he slept in the selchie's cave.

After she had left him it hadn't taken him very long to decide that he didn't want to be dead.


End file.
